News

Most Massachusetts building trade union members are White, and most minority-owned contractors are non-union. Will Vineyard Wind’s commitment to union labor make it harder to meet workforce diversity targets?

Stephanie Myles (fellow classmate, rockstar activist, and now dear friend!) and I were teamed up to support Cruz Companies, the largest Black-owned business in Massachusetts, with developing a five-year strategic plan for their property management division. Over the course of six weeks, we met with various leaders and staff members to unpack the systemic barriers to their growth and create an actionable framework to support their expansion in the low-income and mixed affordable housing space.

A rising economy in Greater Boston over much of the past decade hasn’t only benefited companies’ bottom lines — it’s also been a boon for the area’s philanthropic needs through corporate cash donations, volunteering and in-kind giving. Here are the largest corporate givers in Massachusetts, with rankings based on the Business Journal’s exclusive research.

John B. Cruz III is the 15th recipient of the BBJ’s Alnoba Lewis Family Foundation CEO Social Leadership Award, given to an executive who goes beyond in creating solutions to help solve Greater Boston’s biggest community challenges.

The Boston Preservation Alliance presented its 2021 President’s Award for Excellence to John Cruz and Cruz Companies. A third-generation family business based in Roxbury, the Cruz Companies are dedicated to developing and constructing landmark projects, residential buildings and helping Boston’s urban community through their social responsibility branch, Cruz CARES.

Four years after the City of Boston established more ambitious goals for equitable hiring in construction jobs, none of the city’s top projects hit the standard for hiring women and less than a third met the standard for hiring people of color, according to five years of city data obtained by GBH News.